A. D. Epirot troops to seize the castle of Phanari. Guy was at Thebes, his favourite residence, when he heard that 1290-1308. his nephew's territories were invaded. Eager to prove himself worthy of the high trust confided to his care, he summoned all his friends and vassals to join his banner, and marched to avenge the injury offered to his helpless pupil. Boniface of Verona, lord of Karystos, Francis de la Carcere, lord of Negrepont, the count of Soula, and Nicholas of Saint-Omer, marshal of Achaia, and a feudatory of the duchy of Athens for one half of the lordship of Thebes, all joined the duke's camp, each at the head of more than one hundred knights and esquires. The whole army, when drawn up in the plain of Vlachia at Domokos, amounted to nine hundred Latin knights and horsemen in complete armour, six thousand Vallachian and Greek cavalry, and thirty thousand infantry, if we can rely on the Chronicles. The chief command was entrusted to Saint-Omer, and the army advanced to Trikala Stagous and Sirako, from which it could have reached Joannina in three easy marches. But the rapidity of the young duke's movements alarmed Anna and her counsellors, and she was glad to purchase peace by delivering up the castle of Phanari, and paying ten thousand perpers or gold byzants for the expenses of the expedition.1 In 1304, Guy II. married Maud of Hainault, daughter of Isabella Villehardoin, princess of Achaia. Maud was then only eleven years old.2 Guy received Kalamata, the hereditary fief of the Villehardoins in the Morea, as his wife's dowry; but he soon advanced a claim to the government of the whole principality, of which he pre The Livre de la Conqueste becomes in some degree a historical authority of value as it approaches the times of the author. Thalassinos, which it mentions as a village one day's march from Domokos and two from Trikala, is erroneously confounded by the editor with the town of Elasona. Oloosson. P. 406-418. Maud or Matilda, daughter of Isabella Villehardoin and Florenz of Hainault, was born 30th November 1293.-Livre de la Conqueste, 388, note. § 2. CHAP. VII. tended that Philip of Savoy, the third husband of Isabella, held possession illegally. In order to make good his claim by force of arms, Guy enrolled in his service Fernand Ximenes and a part of the Catalans who had quitted the Grand Company at Cyzikos. The projects of Guy were frustrated by his early death in 1308. As he left no children, the male line of de la Roche became extinct, and his cousin, Walter de Brienne, succeeded to the duchy of Athens and Thebes. SECT. II.-STATE OF ATHENS UNDER THE HOUSE OF DE LA ROCHE. It is usual to suppose that Athens was a miserable and decayed town during the whole period of the middle ages, and that Attica then offered the same barren, treeless, and unimprovable aspect which it now does as a European kingdom. Such, however, was not the case. The social civilisation of the inhabitants, and their ample command of the necessaries and many of the luxuries of life, were in those days as much superior to the condition of the citizens of Paris and London as they are now inferior. When Walter de Brienne succeeded to the duchy, it occupied a much higher position in the scale of European states than is at present occupied by the kingdom of Greece. The Spaniard Muntaner, who was well acquainted with all the rich countries around the Mediterranean, then the most flourishing portion of the globe, and who was familiar with the most magnificent courts of Europe, says that the dukes of Athens were among the greatest princes who did not possess the title of king. He has left us a description of the court of Athens, which gives us a high idea of its magnifi 1 Isabella was thrice married-1st. When a child, to Louis-Philippe, second son of Charles of Anjou; 2d. To Florenz of Hainault; 3d. To Philip of Savoy. STATE OF GREEK POPULATION. 167 A. D. cence;1 and he declares that the nobles of the duchy then spoke as good French as the Parisians themselves.2 The 1205-1308. city was large and wealthy, the country thickly covered with villages, of which the ruins may still be traced in spots affording no indications of Hellenic sites. Aqueducts and cisterns then gave fertility to land now unproductive; olive, almond, and fig-trees were intermingled with vineyards, and orchards covered ground now reduced, by the want of irrigation, to yield only scanty pasturage to the flocks of nomade shepherds. The valonia, the cotton, the silk, and the leather of Attica then supplied native manufactories, and the surplus commanded a high price in the European markets. The trade of Athens was considerable, and the luxury of the Athenian ducal court was celebrated in all the regions of the West where chivalry flourished. Nor was the position of the Greek subjects of the dukes at this period one of severe oppression. Civilisation had penetrated deeper into the social relations of men in Greece than in the rest of Europe, and its effects were displayed in the existence of a middle class, living in ease, and by the decay of slavery and serfdom. Though the Greeks of Athens were a conquered race, the terms of capitulation granted by Otho de la Roche secured to them all the privileges, as individual citizens, which they had enjoyed under the Byzantine government, with much greater freedom from financial oppression. The feudal conquerors of Greece soon perceived that it was greatly for their interest to respect the terms of the capitulations concluded with their Greek subjects, and to gain their good-will. Each grand feudatory soon became aware that the Greeks, from their wealth and numbers, might be rendered useful allies in opposing the exorbitant pretensions of their own immediate vassals and military followers, 1 Muntaner, chap. ccxliv. p. 481, of Buchon's translation, edit. of 1840. 2 Ibid., chap. cclxi. p. 502. § 2. CHAP. VII. and in restraining the avarice of the Latin clergy, the ambition of the Pope, or the pretensions of the emperor of Romania. The peculiar condition of the Greek landed proprietors, who were in some degree both capitalists and merchants, taught their princes the necessity of alleviating the natural severity of the feudal system, and modifying the contempt it inculcated for the industrious and unwarlike classes of society. The high value of some of the productions of Greece, before the discovery of America and the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope, placed the landed proprietors on the coasts of Greece, and particularly those of Attica and Boeotia, in the receipt of considerable money-revenues. They were thus enabled to pay to their dukes an amount of taxation which many monarchs in Western Europe were unable to extract from numerous cities and burghs, whose trade depended on slow and expensive land-communications, and from cultivators without capital, who raised little but corn and hay. An alliance of interest was thus formed between the Frank princes and their Greek subjects. The taxes paid by the Greeks supplied their sovereign with the means of hiring more obedient military followers than the array of the vassals of the fief. It became consequently an object of importance to the Frank barons in Greece to protect the natives as allodial proprietors, or, at least, as holding their lands directly from the prince, on payment of a money-rent, corresponding to the amount of taxation they had previously paid to the Byzantine empire, instead of distributing the land among the invaders as military fiefs. Interest, therefore, preserved to the Greek proprietors the richest portions of the conquered territory in the immediate vicinity of the towns; while the Crusaders generally received the territorial domains, for which they were bound to pay personal military service, in the more distant valleys and retired districts a fact which is still PROSPEROUS CONDITION OF ATHENS. 169 A D. proved by the existing divisions of property, and by the ruins of feudal strongholds. Out of this state of things 1205-1308. there can be no doubt that a constant struggle arose between the dukes, who desired to extend their authority and increase their revenues-the Frank military vassals, who demanded the complete division of the whole conquered country, in order to increase the numbers and power of their own class-and the Greeks, who laboured and intrigued to defend their possessions and maintain the capitulations. To the existence of this struggle for a long period, without any party venturing openly to disregard the principles of justice and the force of public opinion, we must in a great measure attribute the prosperous state of Athens and Thebes, under the government of the house of de la Roche, and the long duration of the Frank domination in Attica. The security enjoyed by the Greeks attached them to their dukes, and they obtained the privilege of bearing arms. Their wealth enabled them to purchase the best defensive armour and the finest horses; and their leisure allowed them to acquire the skill, without which the defensive armour of the time, from its great weight, became an incumbrance rather than an advantage. Though they never became a match for the Frank chivalry in a pitched battle, they often bore a prominent part, and performed good service, in the wars of the period.1 SECT. III.-WALTER DE BRIENNE-THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY. Walter de Brienne was the son of Isabella de la Roche, sister of the dukes John and William. She married Hugh de Brienne, count of Lecce, in the kingdom of Naples. The family of Brienne was pre-eminent for brilliant actions in the brightest age of chivalry; but the 1 George Acropolita (p. 93) distinctly mentions the Greeks as forming part of the army of William, prince of Achaia, at the battle of Pelagonia. |